Chapter 14 - The Man Beside Dominic
Dominic refused to believe it.
“Luca raised me.”
Eliza stared at him.
“You said that about Teresa.”
He flinched.
The point landed.
They investigated quietly.
Luca’s phone records showed unexplained calls.
His vehicle had visited Harland & Wilson twice.
Money had entered an offshore account under his name.
Evidence mounted.
Dominic became colder with every discovery.
Finally, he confronted Luca.
The older man listened without interrupting.
Then said:
“Yes.”
Dominic’s face went empty.
“Yes?”
“I arranged access to the building.”
“Why?”
“To stop the fire.”
Dominic stared.
Luca had infiltrated Crown’s plan.
The offshore money was payment he accepted to maintain cover.
He had already replaced several incendiary devices with inert copies.
“But not all,” Luca said.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know where the last device is.”
James’s information was real.
The building remained at risk.
They had twelve hours.
Eliza returned to Harland & Wilson under federal protection.
Employees were evacuated under the pretext of a gas leak.
Mark searched financial servers.
Gabriel and Luca searched mechanical levels.
Dominic stayed with Eliza.
At 11:40 p.m., they found the final device.
Not in the server room.
Inside the old executive archive.
Where Eliza’s first Northbridge report was stored.
Someone wanted the fire to erase the original paper evidence.
Bomb technicians removed the device.
No explosion occurred.
But Halston had anticipated failure.
At midnight, the servers began wiping remotely.
Mark shouted from the control room:
“They’re deleting everything.”
Eliza ran toward her desk.
“Can you stop it?”
“Not remotely.”
“Backups?”
“Encrypted.”
“Where?”
Mark looked at her.
“Your department.”
Eliza remembered.
Harland & Wilson maintained compliance snapshots on cold storage every Friday.
She found the backup.
The ledger survived.
Everything survived.
At 12:06, Senator Halston’s office issued a statement denying all connections.
At 12:22, federal agents raided his properties.
At 1:15, news outlets published pieces of the evidence.
By sunrise, Crown began collapsing.
Executives resigned.
Accounts were frozen.
Investigations opened across multiple states.
Eliza sat on the floor of her old office.
Dominic handed her coffee.
Large vanilla latte.
She stared.
“7:15?”
“Approximately.”
“You remembered.”
“You accused me of stalking you over it.”
“Fair.”
He sat beside her.
“You did this.”
“We did.”
“No.”
Dominic looked at the sunrise through the windows.
“You could have taken the companies and disappeared.”
“I considered it.”
“You stayed.”
“So did you.”
He smiled faintly.
Mark entered.
He saw the two of them sitting together.
No jealousy.
Just exhaustion.
“Halston is in custody.”
Eliza exhaled.
“And Victoria?”
“Hospital wing at federal detention.”
Her leukemia had worsened.
She might have months.
Eliza expected satisfaction.
Instead, she felt tired.
“What about James?”
Mark’s expression changed.
“Gone.”
Of course.
Her biological father had disappeared again.
But this time he left no threats.
Only one message.
Live better than we did.
Eliza decided she would.
Then another problem emerged.
The Castellano companies.
Thousands of legitimate employees depended on businesses tied to criminal financing.
Eliza legally controlled them.
Federal prosecutors offered a deal.
She could surrender all ownership.
Or cooperate in restructuring.
Dominic expected her to walk away.
She refused.
“If we abandon everything, innocent people lose jobs.”
“This empire hurt people,” Dominic said.
“Then we change what it is.”
He looked at her.
“You want to run it?”
“No.”
She smiled.
“I want professionals to run it.”
Independent board.
Auditors.
Public reporting.
Employee ownership.
Dominic laughed softly.
“My father would haunt us.”
“Good.”
For the first time, the family empire began becoming something else.
But peace never arrives all at once.
Three weeks later, Eliza woke at 3:14 a.m. with blood on the sheets.
“Mark.”
He woke instantly.
“Eliza?”
She looked down.
His face drained of color.
Within minutes they were in the hospital.
Doctors rushed her into an examination room.
Mark stood outside unable to breathe.
Dominic arrived twenty minutes later.
Then Catherine.
Then Jenna.
Then Gabriel and Sofia.
Family, chosen and biological, filled the hallway.
Finally Dr. Foster emerged.
Mark stood.
“The baby?”
Her expression was serious.
“Heartbeat is present.”
Everyone exhaled.
“But Eliza has a placental complication.”
Mark went pale.
“Is she going to lose the baby?”
“We’re doing everything we can.”
He looked through the glass.
Eliza lay frightened and alone.
Mark whispered:
“I promised I would protect her.”
Dominic stood beside him.
“You can’t protect people from everything.”
Mark’s eyes filled.
“Then what do I do?”
Dominic answered:
“Stay.”
Mark entered the room.
Eliza reached for him.
May you like
And this time, when he took her hand, she didn’t let go.
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